As voting for this year’s Singapore Blog Awards draws to a close, I’d like to end with some final thoughts.

When it comes to giving tips and points on doing your part for the environment, one tends to encounter the usual suggestions on the 3Rs, cutting down on the amount of waste generated, saving water and electricity, and reducing our reliance on fossil fuels. These can all be summarised by this overarching concept:

It’s a question that anyone involved in nature outreach in Singapore is bound to encounter someday. Yes, despite this country being a small island that has undergone lots of development, lots of wildlife still survives or even thrives in Singapore! If you’ve ever pondered this question yourself, here’s a video that was first screened at last year’s Festival of Biodiversity.

Teresa Teo-Guttensohn, a Singaporean eco-artist and Dr. Vilma D’Rozario, Celine Low, and Andrew Tay, together with their group of nature-loving friends, will be part of an eco-performance where they will be chained to a tree for 24 hours, to appeal for the Cross Island Mass Rapid Transit Line to be re-routed such that it will not run through our precious rainforest at the Central Catchment Nature Reserve.

After the success of last year’s inaugural Festival, we’re hoping to reach out to even more people, highlight the wonderful wildlife and important green spaces that we still have here in Singapore, and encourage people to play a more active role in protecting and conserving our natural heritage.

Do you know that Singapore is home to more than 400 species of marine fishes? Do you know that Singapore is also home to 250 species of hard corals, which is almost one third of the diversity found in the world? Do you know that species such as the horseshoe crab and the banded leaf monkey can be found in Singapore? Join us at the festival to explore and learn more about Singapore’s rich biodiversity!

Join us in the many exciting activities we have in store for you at the festival, and find out how you can play a part in conserving our biodiversity. By participating in the festival, you can gain a deeper understanding and appreciation of Singapore’s rich biodiversity, its benefits, and relevance to us in Singapore.

Over the years, Singapore has lost more than 99.5% of its original forest cover. Whatever little that remains is now concentrated in a few key areas, and preserves much of our surviving native rainforest biodiversity. The Central Nature Reserves, encompassing the forests of Bukit Timah and those surrounding the reservoirs in the Central Catchment Area, form the final refuge of many plant and animal species that have since vanished elsewhere on the island. As Nature Reserves, they receive the highest level of protection that any green space in Singapore can have.

And yet, as many of us in the nature community found out earlier this year, even being gazetted as a Nature Reserve does not grant immunity from urbanisation and development.

When it comes to nature photography, birds hog all the limelight. Even when photographers head out in pursuit of invertebrates, it’s the bright and flashy dragonflies and butterflies that attract the most attention. Yet there is an entire world that we usually overlook. We may care about the plight of the giant panda and Siberian tiger and bald eagle, but we often forget all about the realm that exists beneath our feet.

I have plenty of old t-shirts from different stages of my life, from the P.E. attire that I wore in secondary school and junior college, to those that I received for participating in freshman orientation activities in university. And there are loads of others that I just don’t wear anymore, simply because I’ve outgrown them, or the print has faded. Many of these clothes got a new lease of life by being handed down to others in my extended family. Just like how some of my wardrobe consists of hand-me-downs from my father, my uncles, and my older cousins, so my younger relatives now own what I once wore.

But then there are plenty of other clothes that I’m unwilling to give away, partly because of sentimental value. Is there a way I can continue to keep them yet free up space in my wardrobe?

Thanks to Panasonic’s Go Eco, Get Crafty workshop, which was held on Saturday at City Square Mall, I learnt two simple ways to convert t-shirts into other useful items. And as a bonus, I finally got a chance to meet the rest of the finalists in the Panasonic Best Eco-Challenge Blog category.

The Naked Hermit Crabs spent a enjoyable Friday morning with some special guests on the Chek Jawa Boardwalk. It was a fun trip, and despite the weather, we managed to encounter a lot of interesting wildlife, and shared lots of stories about Chek Jawa and its many inhabitants. I may have used these paths and boardwalks countless times over the last 5 years or so, but I’ll never tire of showing people the marvels of this little gem.

The haze is back! Oh dear. This was the view that greeted us this morning when we’d reached the top of the Jejawi Tower at Chek Jawa. Much of Pulau Tekong is obscured by the thick haze, and we can’t even see the hills of Johor beyond.